Freya Christie praises Black Lives Matter movement

The Black Lives Matter movement continues to signal a global shift in mentalities and Christie, who has received recent racist abuse on social media, says the campaign is raising vital awareness towards the widespread nature of injustice.

“I think it’s great – there are a lot of sportspeople out there who are definitely spreading the message and the awareness,” she said.

“Myself in the last few weeks, I’ve received some quite horrible messages in terms of the colour of my skin.

“So for people to show awareness, use their platform, and really expose people to what happens, and show that it is around and is real, is great.

“You get people sending you nasty messages, and you just have to block them and report them - it can be quite difficult but you’ve just got to try to move on.

“The great thing with the Black Lives Matter Movement is showing people that this sort of thing happens, and that brings that awareness and those people can’t then get away with it as much as they do.”

Christie is one of 24 leading players duelling it out in the widely-billed Premier League of tennis, playing alongside a glittering array of talent including Harriet Dart and Eden Silva in the women’s draw and Liam Broady and Anton Matusevich in the men’s.

The innovative format was devised by Andy Murray’s coach, Jamie Delgado, with players on Classic Week being split into two boxes of six ahead of finals weekend on August 15th and 16th.

Christie finished Pool A with six points from her five matches, missing out on the top two spots.